I feel like this is an artifact from the late 2010s when the talk was of removing the port completely from phones, where that was being touted alongside swapping speakers with haptic screen audio as a way to make them completely waterproof.
As wireless charging never quite reached the level hoped – see AirPower – and Google/Apple seemingly bought and never did anything with a bunch of haptic audio startups, I figure that idea died....but they never cared enough to make sure the USB port remained top end.